by Emily Asad
Chapter 12: Strength
I found Tony stretched out by the fire when I woke up on Tuesday morning, clutching a stick like a it was his security blanket. It had burned to fine white ash. Some of the powder dusted him like snowflakes. With all the cold snaps, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it actually had snowed.
I bent down and brushed some of the white flakes off his shoulder. “Tony. Tony, time to get up.”
He jerked awake with a lion’s roar, nearly punching me. His fist stopped an inch away from my stomach.
I lost my balance and fell backward. “Uffda,” I grunted.
“Sorry,” he kept saying. “You caught me in a nightmare...”
Sleep hadn’t helped, then. Would he be in a bad mood again today?
I dusted myself off, as if removing ash would be any improvement over the layers of dirt and sweat that already covered my skin and clothes. “Is that a club?” I asked, pointing to the stick.
“Actually, it’s a crutch. I found it last night. Just in case you were tired of me wearing you around my neck like an oversized jacket.” He handed me the long, stout stick. Sure enough, two branches formed into a Y that came right up to my armpit.
“It’s perfect,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Not that I mind carrying you,” he said, “but it might be easier this way.”
“But not as warm.” I dared a friendly smile.
He returned it, slow but just as friendly, which was a relief.
I did my best to take down the tent, but it was all I could do to keep my weight on my good foot, like a red-headed sandhill crane standing one-legged in the water, except that the crane would have had better balance. No kidding, I don’t know why the leather didn’t stretch with all the swelling.
It was our first morning on truly empty stomachs. There were no power bars or Army meals or convenient little packets of water. We started the day hopeful that we’d find more berries or cattails, or even just a creek to refill the empty canteen, but the terrain grew rockier and drier as we approached the cliffs near Dead Island Lake. Funny enough, after all the little ponds and creeks we’d passed in the past few days, I just assumed they’d always be around. After a few hours of nothing, though, I began to grow desperate.
At one point, I asked, “How much further?”
Tony’s response, “Not that far,” was the only conversation we had for the rest of the morning. Neither of us had the strength for idle chatter.
The blisters on my good foot had long since burst, giving way for new blisters and raw skin. Even my crutch hurt my armpit, though it was indeed easier to hobble along without timing my strides to Tony’s. When the yellow sun shone high overhead so that I was walking directly over my shadow, I called for a break. By then, the terrain had turned to hard rock. The soft, green meadows were gone, replaced by gray pebbles and sharp-edged shale. Even the blades of grass that grew out of the rocks were sharp-edged. There weren’t as many trees as before, either, and the ones that now surrounded us were scraggly and twisted. Dead trees, brown and leafless, poked up into the sky like telephone poles.
Even so, there was a kind of rugged beauty to the scenery: yellow grasses, red wildflowers, deep crimson leaves. When we arrived at the top of the stone ridge, the open sapphire blue sky caused my heart to leap into my throat. I’d never seen such grandeur. In Minneapolis, the tall buildings and old architecture define magnificence; here, it was the absence of human interference that grabbed me by the throat.
I turned to Tony, beaming. “Mind if we take a quick break?”
“Here? Out in the open?”
“I thought rescue teams gave up after three days.”
“Seventy-two hours, and Drosnin will never give up until he’s got my body. My dead body. Can you make to the bottom of the ridge? Going down is the easy part.”
I nodded, gripping my crutch a little tighter. I only asked because it was so beautiful up there, but by the time we got down to the intersection where the trees met the base of the ridge, I was panting as if I had just run a marathon.
“You all right?” Tony asked, looking down at me. “You look really pale.”
“Just winded.”
He felt my face. “You’re cold.”
“I know.” I tried to smile. “Funny on a warm day like this, huh?”
“You want to sit for a while?”
I had the feeling that if I sat down, I wasn’t going to want to get up again. I shook my head.
“Another few miles, and we’re there. Then we head off to Otter Paw, okay?”
“I can do this,” I said.
“I know you can.” He took my crutch from me and wrapped my arm around his neck.
It was slower going that way, but much warmer for me. Still, I felt like I was going to pass out. Soon I asked for a break again.
“Can you keep going a little further?”
Keep going? All of a sudden, my hunger, thirst, headache, blisters, fatigue and pain poured over me as if I’d passed under one of the icy waterfalls in Lake Itasca. I felt drowned under the helplessness. My good leg crumpled, and I collapsed on the nearest boulder.
“All right,” he said, joining me. He took my hand in his. “You’re fine. We’ll make it. Everything’s okay.”
It sounded like he was talking more to himself than to me, but white noise filled my ears and it was a struggle to stay sitting upright. I took several deep, slow breaths. Eventually, my heart stopped pounding so fast, and I felt less dizzy-headed. I was able to focus on the patches of orange and white wildflowers at my feet. I picked one of them and held it to my nose, letting its soft fragrance comfort me. I felt better enough to make a joke about plucking up an endangered species.
“We’re hiding from people with guns and you’re worried about being arrested for destroying wildlife?” Tony asked.
“Well, you know. Hey - are those cattails?” I asked, pointing at some tall stalks behind the trees.
“In this terrain? It’s too dry. Cattails grow in marshes or lakes.”
“It’s been really dry this season,” I argued. “What if the marsh dried up or something? Go see.”
He shrugged, but he walked over to the clearing. Then he turned back to face me, grinning. “Amazing.”
There were only about twenty stalks, but food was food. I savored the sweet cores for as long as I could. “If only there was water, this would be a decent lunch.”
“Make it to Dead Island Lake, and you can have all the water you want,” he promised.
I took the hint and struggled to stand. He held out his hand, but I pushed it away. “I can do it on my own.”
“I know you can, but we’re already behind schedule.” He continued to hold out his hand.
I took it.
Although I felt a whole lot better after our break, it seemed to have the opposite effect on Tony. He withdrew completely. From time to time, I saw him move his lips, as if he were having a conversation with an invisible person. His fists clenched, too, like he wanted to hit something. And then, when my crutch got stuck between some cracks in the rock, he snapped.
“Stupid stick,” he said, wiggling it free. Then louder, “Stupid stick!”
All the frustrations of the past few days poured out into one long, primal bellow that frightened me to my toes. He dropped to his knees, his roar so loud that I actually glanced up at the sky as if a helicopter would locate us by the echo. When that roar finished, he uttered another even louder than the first.
I stood there, eyes wide, as he began to pound the dirt. It sounded like he was sobbing, but I couldn’t see his face.
After a minute or two, he sat back on his heels.
“Uh, you okay?” I asked, afraid to touch him.
He looked up at me, sheer agony written all over his face. He didn’t have any tears in his eyes, but it was obvious that his calm had shattered. “Do you ever... it’s just... arggh! So helpless! I’m supposed to testify tomorrow! I’ve waited years for this nightmare
to finish. If I don’t testify, who knows what will happen to me, to my family, to that criminal?”
I gestured to my injured ankle. “I understand helpless and frustrated.”
“I don’t mean pain,” he snickered. “I mean for your very survival.”
“All the time, every day,” I replied. “I’m not talking about right now. My family fought a war against divorce, and I’m the one who lost. I’m completely without control. Just a pawn in their fights. And I can’t do anything to make them stop - even though they live so far apart from each other.” I paused. “Maybe my life isn’t in danger when I’m at home, but I do understand how you feel. It’s a daily battle, isn’t it?”
He didn’t respond, so I dropped to a knee beside him. “Hey,” I said, trying to be supportive but sounding sharp instead, “you’re always talking about making choices. Are you going to choose to sit there in defeat, or get up and keep fighting? Come on, let’s go.”
His shoulders slumped even more. “We’ll never make it at this pace,” he whispered.
“Fine. So leave me behind and jog your way to Otter Paw.”
That did the trick - he made eye contact with me. “I’d never leave you behind.”
“So are we going to start hiking again or what?”
He sighed. For a moment, I thought he was just going to sit there for the rest of the day. Then he squared his shoulders, and stood up. “Okay, then.”
“Okay, then.” I picked up my walking stick and started off, leaving him to follow. Before he had a chance to catch up, though, I turned to face him. “Don’t do that again. You’re stronger than that, and I need you to be strong for both of us. I mean it. I’d have fallen apart by now if I didn’t have you.”
He nodded. “Fine. But if you need me to be strong, I need you to be my sanity. If I miss that deadline tomorrow, I don’t know what I’ll do.” He glanced back at the ridge as if he’d throw himself off it.
I shuddered. “Agreed.” I led him away from there as fast as I could.